What Would Google Do ... A Review

I'm making an effort to review the books I read on here, whether or not they relate explicitly to education law (this one does only tangentially). I have been reading heavily into technology lately and we return to that theme today. So you know, I get a lot of my tech. book tips from Scott McLeod, and this one is no different. I'm hoping his review is upcoming and I'll be interested to compare notes. 

Today: What Would Google Do, Jeff Jarvis, 2009, @$20 on Amazon.

The Bad:

1. I found the author very annoying. Sometimes the author gets in the way, and this is one of those cases. Jeff Jarvis didn't change the world, Google did, but Jeff seems to forget that from time to time. Also, you can easily tell that Jarvis is not a digital native. Some things he still doesn't seem to intuitively "get." Also, all his personal problems with Dell ... sorry, I'll stop, but you'll notice it as well.
2. Impractical at points. What Would Google Do ... to Toilet Paper? Just forget it. 
3. Enough with the "Google ____" ... it certainly got old. Googlejuice? [Shaking head]
4. Jumpy at places. Toward the end he starts running through industries too quickly and not effectively enough.
5. Some of his points end in socialism ... he tries to say otherwise, but its hard not to see how that happens. Too many of his points are based on "advertising" as the only revenue model. That is just not going to work in a capitalistic marketplace. Someone has to be making money on "atoms" or knowledge or something. Not everything can be free all the time and still call it capitalism. Last I checked, Twitter is still losing money, even though it is the hottest free thing going.

The Good:

1. A plethora of intelligent points and a pretty easy read. Its quick and painless if you can ignore Jarvis' self-congratulating style. 
2. "Be a Platform" - One of the best take-away points and I think either online or offline. Letting others build off of your work is a sure-fire influencing strategy. 
3. Tap into existing networks - Don't go through the trouble to build new networks when tapping into existing ones is so much easier. Make that network's life easier and you have an Internet winner.
4. "Inverse Relationship Between Control and Trust" - I think this is a good point for today's world, but a better point is that there is a direct relationship between trust and the control that "I" have. When I am helping to control an organization, obviously I feel more trust in it.
5. Protect Innovation. Obviously in my job I love my 1 day a week that is my time, which I can use for innovation (or other things). But, too often we overwork the very folks that have the potential for innovation. Assistant Profs obviously come to mind, but new attorneys in law firms, residents at hospitals, etc. 
6. Google U. - I like the points here. Stuff that is sort of "duh" to digital natives in academia, but maybe it will convert some immigrants.

The Recommendation:

I'd spend the money to go get this one. I did it as an audiobook over the Labor Day weekend and it was a good way to pass the boringness that is southern Indiana. Jarvis makes a multitude of good points and I found myself thinking of the application of those points to my life and industry all the way. I was inspired enough to perhaps even write a short article about it. So, I think the Amazon score of 4 out of 5 stars is about right, but it is an excellent pickup for a brainstorming session for your own organization.

Students ... Give Up Your Passwords? Parents ... Give Up Your Schools!

A private school in S.C. has passed a policy requiring students in the school to give school officials their social networking passwords upon request (Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc.). The story (also on CNN video - a couple minutes in). Here's the local video:

I've thought about this for a couple days now, and I can't really think of a legal problem here (if you disagree, let me know, I would be happy to be proved wrong). The lawyer in the video says it is an invasion of privacy, but students don't really have many privacy rights and the fact this is at a private school gives them even less (if this was a public, it would be a search and seizure issue). The school really has no power to force students to reveal passwords if they don't want to, other than to threaten to kick the student out of the private school, so hopefully students are smart enough to see though this little charade.  

But, I think this just reinforces Scott McLeod's point from a few days ago. I just hope that parents who send their kids to schools like this realize the disadvantage they are putting their students at. While this school is busy scaring their students away from social networking, some other school in the city is integrating it into their curriculum. The world is not going to stop, no matter how much some traditionalists want it to, and the language of the age is social media. If your child is not speaking that language ... then you are putting them at a serious disadvantage. 

The President's Speech to Students and the Craziness that Ensued

Okay ... approaching the edge of sanity today with the public outcry against the President's upcoming address to students returning to school. This whole thing, the politicization of this event by some, makes me a little sick to my stomach. He is tasked with making students do better, but is not allowed to simply ask them to do better. Perverse, no? If you don't want him trying to improve government, then you shouldn't have elected him to head the government. As it is, since the federal government spends $100 billion on education, I don't think it is wrong for the chief federal officer to address the recipients of those funds directly. In fact, I think it is a pretty cool, and potentially effective, idea. I am actually impressed at the President and his staff for even thinking of the idea. Who better to tell our underachieving African-American males to work hard in school?

But, so be it, the common trend I am seeing from administrators today is to a) either don't interrupt the schedule for it, or b) allow students to opt out. I am seeing some administrators on the various listservs I belong to requiring their students to see it - and I commend them for it - but they are the exception. The safe route here is to permit students to opt out. In fact, the new Commissioner here in KY has said that schools need to "provide alternatives." So, as long as you are providing an alternative (hello, study hall) to students or parents that are on the edge of the deep end, then you school administrators should be fine.

This, too, shall pass.

Welcoming Dr. Hutchens to The Edjurist

Source: UKY COE GraphicsToday is a great day for The Edjurist because I get to introduce our third UK contributor, Dr. Neal Hutchens. Neal is as talented and promising as they come and we're lucky to have him both here at UK and blogging at The Edjurist.

Let's start at the top; Neal was first a high school history and geography teacher - that was before he went to law school and got a J.D. from the University of Alabama School of Law. Then Neal went to Washington. While in D.C. Neal worked as a legislative fellow on the U.S. Senate's Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions - and during that time he worked on the latest reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. But, as if that wasn't enough, Neal was also obtaining a Ph.D. in Education Policy from the University of Maryland. Then Neal entered academia at Barry University's Dwayne O. Andreas School of Law where he taught courses such as Constitutional Law. Earlier this year Neal left Barry and joined us here at the University of Kentucky in our Department of Educational Policy Studies and Evaluation. While Neal covers lots of different areas of educational law, his primary focus is higher education law and student and teacher/faculty rights.

So, we can all look forward to Dr. Hutchens' posts - they promise to be outstanding.

"Put Christ Back Into Schools" Facebook Group - Really?

The "Put Christ Back Into Schools" Facebook group is almost at a million members. Their position statement:

1. Allow Teaching of and only the Bible by teachers at any time to students anytime.
2. Allowing the Bible (and only the Bible) to be an elective in all schools, and not forced upon.

They also ask:

According 1st Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America, every person has the right to religion. Why is praying/reading of the Bible not allowed in most schools?

Oh ... I don't know ... how about the other clause in that Amendment ... the one on the government not establishing a religion? Allowing teachers to read the Bible, and only the Bible, in public school classrooms is about as close to establishing a religion as you can get.

Now, I would really hesitate to believe that a million people support a public school teacher force feeding a Muslim student Bible passages - yet, that is the impression that you get when you see it. I love social media, but one of the drawbacks is that the more extreme the group, the more likely it is that they get a ton of followers. So, this is a great example of why it is important to understand social media before you can assign small elements of it (inaccurate) meaning.

Aggressive Churches and School Influence

I was sort of disturbed by this story out of Gainesville earlier this week which had a local church encouraging its school age students to wear t-shirts to school which said "Islam is of the Devil." The Gainesville Sun has pictures and video. Starting at 2:58, the pastor starts speaking, and it is worth listening to.

Now, the principal (or Dean or whatever) of the school said the front of the shirt, which contains a bible verse, could be worn in school. Big mistake. I would absolutely ban that as well.

But, the general point here is the aggressiveness of the pastor in promoting religious messages at school. That is something that is simply unacceptable. The First Amendment protects their right to worship in whatever way they see fit, but it absolutely does not give them the ability to proselytize at school - and that is what this pastor was attempting to do.

There really is no legal recourse against this church or this pastor, but I do hope the people of Gainesville have enough sense to find a different church and put this pastor out of work.

Missouri School Funding Suit Fails

The Missouri Supreme Court has rejected a school funding suit brought by many districts in that state. It caps 5 years and 6 million dollars worth of litigation. The decision is here. More info on Missouri school finance is here and here.

These school finance suits are always high-risk, high-reward endeavors and today the districts that brought the suit lost big. 

Should We Trust the Numbers? Good Question.

Iowa State is holding a symposium on Sept. 11 titled: Should We Trust the Numbers? A Workshop on Philosophy, Mathematics and Statistics in the Court of Law. What a just flat out awesome idea for a symposium. While the program is a bit philosophical for my tastes, the question nevertheless is extremely important and one that scholars across the country are wrestling with as more and more legal scholars are also being trained as researchers (ex: myself, Scott B., Neal, Scott M., Jon Becker, and that's just the tip of the educational iceberg that my readers are likely to know). What impact that mixing of traditional research with legal decision-making is likely to have is anyone's guess, but certainly one could argue that a very large percentage of the most important cases related to education in the last-half century have used research data to support the legal arguments (Brown v. Board, all the ed. finance cases, etc.). So, all of you Midwesterners that can make it to Ames, should attend and let's hope we see more of these types of formal discussions in the future.

More on Bearing the Costs of Education

Following up on my post yesterday on educational cost inflation, NPR today has information from a Sallie Mae/Gallup study (via The Atlantic) on how students are paying for college (there are lot of other very informative charts in the study and it is worth checking out): 

Sallie Mae/Gallup via The AtlanticThere are a couple of interesting points. First, in families that borrow, they borrow over $10,000 a year. That's a lot of borrowing when one considers the cost over the 2, 4, 6, or 8 years of college. Another interesting point is that the amount of scholarships and grants for the two groups are almost equal. One would think that the grants and scholarships would be more for the borrowing families. 

But, overall, the most surprising numbers are the top numbers of $17,143 and $22,821 spent on higher education in academic year 08-09. That's just flat a lot of bones to be dropping each year on education. Again considered over the 4 year span, the total cost of a four year higher education is now approaching the cost of a home. If you are a family that is attempting the bear this cost right now ... the crisis isn't coming ... its already here. 

Education Costs in Perspective

Niraj Chokshi: The AtlanticThere's a scary chart. The inflation in the price of education has consistently outpaced inflation in the medical world and, of course, inflation itself.  

Now, I am sure the numbers can be argued (although they are from the Department of Labor), but that's not the point. We all know the cost of a college education is rising substantially. The question is what impact will this have, and, as Niraj Chokshi asked, "Could education be our next health-care crisis?"

My answer is that we are already in a crisis, and have been for a while. Worst yet, the crisis is silent in that it doesn't wind up with someone dead in a hospital, but rather someone taking subsidized housing, or working three jobs, or ... going without health insurance. Yes, more students are going to college than ever before, but they are also taking bigger risks than ever before as the debt load on the students and their parents rise. Many Americans had trouble paying their mortgage because their son or daughter was in college, for instance. Further, our economic output is directly tied to our educational attainment, and so it is impossible to separate economic crises from educational crises. But, it is the acknowledgement among non-educators that is lacking. If changing healthcare is like grabbing the third rail for a politician, then messing with education is like standing in front of the train. No one wants to acknowledge the serious concerns facing education because no one actually wants to deal with them. But, our country's economic security depends much more heavily on controlling educational costs than it does on controlling health-care costs.  

The Rubber Room in the New Yorker

A lovely (long) article on the New York City Rubber Rooms (which I frequently get asked about) in the New Yorker worth checking out.

And, this is probably coming out pretty soon - which will keep the rubber room in the news. 

h/t Kishizuka

Defining "Civil Rights" for Curriculum Purposes

Mississippi is looking like they will make "civil rights" an essential part of the curriculum from kindergarten to 12th grade. The civil rights curriculum will be a part of the social studies course, but will be independently tested. 

This is a good idea, but "civil rights" should be defined broadly. Civil rights certainly means the struggles of the African American movement and that should be an essential part of any curriculum, but civil rights also means lots more. Bottom line, civil rights refers to the interaction of the individual with the state. And, as such, civil rights refers to individual freedoms, restrictions, agreements, arguments and how the government incorporates all of these into policy that impact the everyday reality of Americans, and/or, the good folks from Mississippi.  

In short, the proponents of civil rights education in Mississippi are really on a very close page to the proponents of civics education, like Justices O'Connor and Souter. These movements could team up to spread the idea of civics and civil rights more prominently around the country.  

California as the Prototype

If you haven't noticed, California is gearing up the wheels of education reform. The Governor has even called a special session to work on reforming some laws that conflict with the Obama Administration's demands for federal "Race to the Top" dollars. 

What I see happening here is that the Obama Administration intends to use California as a prototype for the kinds of education reforms that they want to push through in the coming years. The typical arguments that you hear from the federal government these days (merit pay, charters, transfers, tying performance data to evaluations) are the same kind of policies that are in the California reform package.

Of course, California also has the same kinds of teacher's union prevalent across most of the country, so how the fight plays out in California will be a precursor to how the flight will likely play out across the U.S. if the Obama Administration continues with their reform ideals. In fact, don't be surprised if the national unions begin devoting a lot of their time and resources to the California fight.  

So, long story short ... keep an eye on California over the next few months because how the national debate will play out will probably reflect the California prototype. 

Some Catching Up: Rose Event Details & New Website

I want to do a little catching up today. I had an extremely busy, but productive, summer. But, lately that has left little time for blogging as I have been traveling around the state and my college coordinating projects. And, I want to make some of those public:

First, I am coordinating an event in conjunction with the Education Law Association in Louisville, Kentucky on October 21 in the evening. The event is tentatively called "Rose at 20: The Past and Future of School Finance Litigation" and will be held in the Brown Hotel's Gallery Ballroom in Louisville. More details will follow, but I'll leak a little secret on the blog that a very high ranking Kentucky official is planning to be in attendance and speak at the event. We also have a lot of other dignitaries on board as well as several experts on school finance both in Kentucky and around the nation (Kern Alexander, Craig Wood, William Thro, Bill Koski, to name a few). The Kentucky Law Journal is doing a special issue for the occasion. And, Scott and our new colleague Neal Hutchens (who I hope to have another announcement about coming soon) have been helping out on the event. Anyway, you'll hear lots more about it in the near future, but thanks to Richard Day for helping to publicize it already.

Second, if you have been following my twitter feed, you'll know I have been working on a new University of Kentucky, College of Education website. It is in public beta right now (and we have said to be careful about releasing it to the public for the next month - but I think I earned the privilege of announcing it here), so there are still some tweaks that need to be made. Anyway, leading that effort was a challenging and rewarding experience, but it took a ton of time this summer. The biggest website I have built to this point was the one you are looking at, so the COE site was a couple magnitudes of scale bigger. But, I do a lot of talking about technology leadership, so I thought I should do some for my own college. I am starting a new blog for our department that is going to serve as sort of news and events source, so for those followers in Kentucky, that may be worth putting in your feed. 

Otherwise, things have been consistently busy. I taught special education law for the first time this summer and it was a blast. I tried out some complicated simulations of IEP, MD and Due Process hearings and the students seemed to enjoy it (although they were probably too competitive). This semester I am back to teaching my regular education law course to a new cohort of principal candidates, so I am glad to be back to my comfort zone. I am debating whether to put my course up on iTunes, so if I do, I'll pass that along as well.

And, all of that above is sort of my excuse for not paying as much attention to this space as I normally do. But, I plan to remedy that immediately. I am going to bring on new contributors, new content, new features, new EdjuristTV episodes ... just to basically be your online source for information on law and education.      

Special Ed. Teacher Instruction in Law

The big news making rounds today is the new GAO report on teacher education as related to special education. In it, the GAO finds that most schools of education require at least one course related to students with disabilities and only 20 percent offer instruction related to ELL students. One of the elements mentioned as a component of the special education training are the federal laws. 

Well, from my experience, this training is woefully lacking in quality. Every time I have undergrads or teach grad. level courses (at multiple institutions now) the story is the same - students don't even know the basics of special education law. Simple stuff like FAPE is a new concept to them. 

So, while schools of ed. may be devoting courses to special education, those courses are not conveying even a basic level of legal knowledge. I think there are probably several reasons for this, but chief among them are that people with no legal training are teaching these courses. As such, they simply require students to read a chapter on the legal basics and leave it at that - and that legal information is not soaking in. 

Thus, this is yet another reason to support the argument for a real law course in initial teacher preparation. Special education, ELL, and other neglected categories are not neglected in real ed. law courses, even at the undergraduate level. 

The Budget Cut Curve

I loved this graphic from a story on Stateline.org on state budget deficits:

National Conference of State Legislators via Stateline.orgWhat is really interesting is their curve projections in that the curve of this recession is steeper, both higher and more narrow. Looking at 2012, from their projections, we are back at very little deficit in state governments. Projections are always suspect, but it does strike me as overly optimistic given that the revenue being generated right now is what is going to largely account for those budgets because of the taxing cycles. 

If you look at the little note in the bottom corner, the "2011 and 2012 estimates are expected to grow" language is super interesting. The story finds that many states are plugging their budget holes for this year, like Kentucky, by using a lot of Stimulus money. If legislators are seeing rosy budget projections like these from groups like Stateline and NCSL, they may have been more likely to plug in Stimulus money rather than taking the harder step of actually cutting programs on the rationale that we are looking at a quicker recovery.

h/t Eduflack

The Louisiana Fall-Out

An outstanding new colleague of mine, Dr. Wayne Lewis (who blogs here on ed. policy - love to bring on these blogging faculty members!) brought me up to speed on the political fight that is going on in Louisiana right now between the State Superintendent of Schools and, well, just about everyone else. Today we hear that Gov. Jindal is being called in to try to mediate the situation.

First, this is what happens when you put a lawyer, who has not been a teacher, in a position like this. There are lots of lawyers out there that have also been teachers, so next time try one of them.

But, the point here is not lawyers in education positions, or even that the summer heat is flaring tempers in Louisiana, but for last few years I have watched Louisiana repeatedly go out on a limb. Just search Louisiana over there in the search box and see all the wild things that Louisiana was trying. Louisiana, through various political lines, has pushed its teachers pretty far and the byproduct of that kind of rapid change is someone's head on a platter. There is blood in the water now for Paul Pastorek, and he likely won't last much longer. There is always a price to be paid for change, for better or worse.

Congrats to Dr. Bauries (and UK)

Just got word from Scott, I mean Dr. Bauries, that his dissertation has been successfully defended. He is a newly minted Ph.D. from the University of Florida Department of Educational Administration and Policy with Dr. Craig Wood as his chair - one of the nation's leading school finance experts. Please join me in congratulating Scott, as writing and defending a dissertation is a once in a lifetime experience.  

THREE. That's now the number of J.D./Ph.D.'s in education policy here at the University of Kentucky, as we also just hired Dr. Neal Hutchens, who is a top flight scholar in higher education law and policy. Unless proven otherwise, we are going to say that we are the only place on the planet that can boast such a collection of educational law scholars - and, even though I am part of this deal, I simply cannot wait to see the kinds of projects that such a collection is likely to spurn. 

SSRN--A valuable resource, but is it compatible with exclusivity?

Many of our readers may not be aware of this resource, but in the world of legal academia, we have become familiar with a service called the Social Science Research Network, or SSRN.  The SSRN site is essentially a clearing house of scholarship (abstracts, working papers, accepted papers, and finished articles with publisher permission) in all areas having to do with social science.  The law-related papers are housed in the Legal Scholarship Network, and within that network, there is a category for education law scholarship. You can use this site to keep abreast of the most recent work in the education law field.

I just updated my most recent piece, forthcoming in the Alabama Law Review, on the site.  The abstract is here, and as with most articles included in SSRN's database, you can download the full text of the current version (All rights are reserved, of course) by using the link at the top of the page.  Downloads of pieces from SSRN are usually free, but you have to register for the service (also free).  Once registered, you can just search for the articles and working papers that interest you, or you can "subscribe" to certain subject matter services (such as the Education Law service), which will mean that you will receive the articles for that category in your email inbox.  SSRN calls these "e-Journals," but they are more like listserves and clearing houses.  Some of these "subscriptions" cost money, though, so manual searching may be the way to go. 

Not only is SSRN very useful for those who want to keep abreast of scholarly trends, but it is also very helpful to academics and other scholarly writers who want to ensure a broad dissemination of their work.  I am interested to know, though, whether the peer-reviewed, exclusive-submission journals most common for tenure articles in fields other than law would have a problem with one "publishing" one's working draft on SSRN.  My intuition says that they would consider the submission non-exclusive or previously published once it was placed on SSRN, but I may be wrong.  This interpretation, I feel, would be unfortunate from the perspective of scholarship dissemination and knowledge building.  Thoughts from editors (and anyone else who might know the answer) are welcome in the comments. 

Change Blogging - Becker Style

Jon Becker, the law/tech. prof. at Virginia Commonwealth, is guestblogging this week at Change.org's education blog, normally run by Clay Burell. The subject for the week is segregation issues, and you can see his first, outstanding, post here. Jon plans for some "courageous conversations" this week, so go check it out.